


we slow dance in the living room, but all that a stranger would see is one girl swaying alone

by The_Bisexual_From_Hell



Series: what died didn't stay dead, you're alive, you're alive in my head [2]
Category: Station 19 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Character Turned Into a Ghost, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, I PROMISE I GAVE THEM HAPPINESS, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, I Wrote This While Listening to Hozier's Music, but that won't stop him and vic from being happy together, ghost au, lucas is a ghost, yeah I made Ripley a figure skater and what about it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28619562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bisexual_From_Hell/pseuds/The_Bisexual_From_Hell
Summary: Vic thought when you died, your life flashed before your eyes, that did not happen to her, she was just alternating between now and the blue fire incident. Time was running out, the fire burned hotter, her turnouts would not hold for longer and she still couldn’t fucking move a muscle. Maybe this is how Victoria Hughes died.“Run, Victoria, Run.” Three simple words that snapped her out of it. She must have been hallucinating because it sounded exactly like Lucas—no, not her Lucas, it sounded like Chief Ripley.OrMy take on 3x07 in which Lucas is a ghost and I let him and Vic get the happy ending they deserve.
Relationships: Victoria Hughes/Lucas Ripley
Series: what died didn't stay dead, you're alive, you're alive in my head [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060649
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	we slow dance in the living room, but all that a stranger would see is one girl swaying alone

**Author's Note:**

> Ha, it's finally finished, it took me longer than expected because of a mild case of writer's block but I'm back baby. I'm sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language and my only beta is Grammarly. 
> 
> Enjoy

Vic is on fire. Literally. 

She had slipped on the diesel and it had reignited, covering all of her body in a powerful blaze. Her turnouts were working as they should, Vic felt like she was in the world's hottest sauna. 

Maya and Travis were yelling at her, for her, she couldn’t hear a single word, everything had turned blurry in her head, sounds were muffled and her ears were ringing.

She couldn’t move, she watched as the world moved in slow motion. She needed to move, to get out of diesel and into the safety of her team, but her limbs were locked. Her mind ran a million miles a minute, and suddenly she was back in the blue fire, heat all around her, breathing—the most natural of human actions—could kill her. 

Vic thought when you died, your life flashed before your eyes, that did not happen to her, she was just alternating between now and the blue fire incident. Time was running out, the fire burned hotter, her turnouts would not hold for longer and she still couldn’t fucking move a muscle. Maybe this is how Victoria Hughes died. 

“Run, Victoria, Run.” Three simple words that snapped her out of it. She must have been hallucinating because it sounded exactly like Lucas—no, not _her_ Lucas, it sounded like Chief Ripley. 

She put one foot in front of the other and she ran like it was the simplest thing in the world. For just a few seconds nothing mattered, she was free, she had no problems, she just ran. 

The next thing she knew, she was being doused in foam. The fire went out, she could breathe properly again, she wasn’t dying, she wasn’t surrounded by blue fire. 

Lucas fucking Ripley had done it again, he was dead, six feet underground dead, and he had still somehow managed to be the only thing that had snapped her out of it. Victoria supposes the human brain is smart like that, she has been panicking, engulfed in flames and her mind went to her safe place to get her out. It had worked perfectly, for a brief moment, she had forgotten Lucas had died.

For just a split second, she could believe that she was going home to his warm embrace, and bad jokes that always got a smile out of her, because to Vic he was the funniest person on the damn planet. She can believe she’ll come home to him cooking her post-shift pancakes like he always did. 

For a split second the love of her life isn’t six feet underground. 

Maya goes back to running the scene while Travis and Andy wash off all the diesel left on her turnouts. She should get checked in on Aid Car to make sure she’s not hurt, but she feels fine and it’s way too much work. So she simply insists she’s okay and she talks about Jackson and how she semi moved in with him. 

She likes Jackson, he is a nice guy, very easy on the eyes but he is no Lucas. That’s okay, no one will ever be Lucas, and she knows she’s not the love of Jackson’s life either. Sometimes in her sleep, she’ll mumble the name Lucas and Jackson will mumble the name April. They’re both placeholders for someone else, they both know it. 

She had just semi-moved in with him because she had gotten kicked out of her own apartment. Victoria was no stranger to self-sabotage, she knew when she was doing it. Forgetting to pay her rent was definitely self-sabotage. 

Her apartment was Vic and Ripley’s place, they had spent so much time there, just the two of them, in the bubble. He had had a key and would let himself in to wait for her before her shift ended, or when he was feeling sad. 

Living in her apparent, waking up without him, seeing his jar of vegemite untouched. It all had all hurt too much. So now she is homeless and basically squatting at Jackson. Legally she owned Lucas’ penthouse, but they had spent so much time there too, and it was the last thing left untouched after his death, so she couldn’t live there. Plus everyone kept saying she needed to move on, and there wouldn't be much moving on if she moved into her dead fiancés home. 

Travis and Andy kept scrubbing her turnouts while talking about how she fucked up with Jackson. She tunes out for a second, the exhaustion that has been building up since Lucas’ death seeping into her bones. 

That’s when she sees him, out of the corner of her eye. Victoria blinks a couple of times, shuts her eyes hard, tries to make the cruel hallucination or mirage go away. Except it doesn't go away, and he remains there, Lucas Ripley in all of his Fire Chief glory standing a few feet away from her.

Her breath catches in her throat, this can't be real, she must be dehydrated and hallucinating, or maybe it's from sleep deprivation—she doesn’t sleep much these days, every time she wakes up she forgets he’s dead and her heart gets crushed all over again when she remembers. 

He’s looking at her with so much pride and love. Her heart starts to race, her emotions are conflicting. It hurts, she misses him so much, at the same time he looks so real, so alive, there are more details of him in this hallucination than in all of her memories combined. 

Victoria Hughes is no coward, she faces her problems head-on (most of the time anyway). She makes eye contact with _Him_ , his eyes are still as electrifying blue as she remembers. She can’t stop herself, she smiles at him, it's an automatic reaction. Her emotions are going haywire, she doesn’t understand what is happening, but for a second none of that matters because he is there and he’s looking at her, at this point Vic will take anything.

All of a sudden his face changes, his eyebrows scrunch together like they did when he was trying to figure out what to cook for dinner or how bad a fire was. It was his thinking face. He looked so handsome even when he was confused. Him being confused in turn made her feel confused, why would her hallucination look confused?

“Uh, Travis, Andy” Vic was unsure of what to say, she couldn’t just say she was seeing her dead fiancé, that would get her committed. They look at her expectantly. Before she could tell them anything about Ripley, they heard a scream, a call for the PRT, and shit hit the fan. When she turned back to see if Lucas was still standing there, she was met with nothing but air. 

Vic brushed it off, attributing it to the shock, the adrenaline, and the heat exposure. The shift ended, Rigo was in the hospital, no one was in a good mood. She shot Jackson a text about being exhausted and not in the mood to spend the night over at his place. 

* * *

It was a cemetery kind of day, after all, that had happened today, all she wanted was to talk to Lucas, and since the idiot had died on her (so maybe she has some unresolved anger around the situation) the best way for her to feel close to him, was going to the cemetery. Only because going to his place was too close. 

“Hey Love, you won’t believe the day I had today.” The first tear fell from her face, as she sat in front of his grave. 

“First of all, I got fucking set on fire. It brought up a lot of bad memories for me, took me right back to the night of the blue fire. Do you remember when I told you about the blue fire? You probably do because I was scared you’d be mad because I hadn’t reported it, but all you did was hold me and told me about your PTSD. Anyways, back to today, I was engulfed in flames, and I completely froze, Maya and Travis were yelling at me, and my limbs wouldn't move. For a second there, I thought I might get cooked like a turkey in the oven. Until I heard your voice, you whispered at me to run, and suddenly the world came back. Then—” 

“You heard that?” Lucas’ voice came from behind her. Vic had never turned around faster, despite the fact that she was sitting down. For the second time that day, Victoria Hughes froze on the spot. There he was, Lucas fucking Ripley standing behind her. Her heart sped up to what felt like a dangerous speed, her breathing stopped. 

“What the fuck.” 

“Victoria?” The Thing—she can’t call him Lucas. Lucas is dead—says. 

“What the actual fuck?" Vic can’t seem to find any other words. 

“Eggy can you see me?” Whatever he is, Not-Lucas seems confused, almost as much as her. 

“I’m losing my mind, I’ve gone insane. I’m hallucinating my dead fiancé” Here she is, having a conversation with the hallucination of her dead fiancé because surely this day can’t get any weirder. 

“You _can_ see me.” Not-Lucas seems surprised. He talks and looks and acts so much like her Lucas that it hurts, the strings of her heart pull and it feels like the knife that he's been in her chest since he died is twisting as if to torture her. 

“Of course I can fucking see you, you’re my hallucination.” She wouldn’t be Victoria Hughes If she didn’t yell at Lucas Ripley. 

“What hallucination? Victoria I'm dead but I’m still me. Does that make me a ghost?” It seems as if Not-Lucas is pondering his own existence, which confuses Vic even more because shouldn’t her hallucination know it's a hallucination? 

“Today is officially fucking shit.”

“Because you get to see me?” He said all smug and cocky 

“Don’t be a little shit Lucas” 

“So you admit I am Lucas and not just a hallucination,” 

“What the hell is happening to me.” She sits down, she might pass out soon, she would rather not get a concussion on top of everything else. 

“Are you leaning on my grave?” 

“Well if you really are the ghost of Lucas, then you don't mind me leaning on your grave for support, emotional or physical.”

“You know me really well Victoria,” He sat down next to her, leaning on his grave, and said in a softer voice “I wouldn’t mind if you murdered someone, I just want you to be happy” 

“Then why did you leave me, Lucas?” Her voice was cracking and the tears were flowing down her face like raindrops on a window. 

“I’m sorry, Eggy. I’m so so so sorry. I never wanted to leave you, I didn’t want to go, I wanted to grow old with you. If I could go back and change things, I would, I promise you from the bottom of my heart I would, Victoria.” He was crying too, so much, they both looked like messes. Lucas wondered if someone were to pass by and look in their direction, would they see two people in love and crying or would they see a crying woman struggling with the loss of a lost one? He supposed both options are true. 

“Damn you, Lucas Ripley, making me cry from beyond the grave,” He snorted at that, the truth was he never wanted to make her cry. “So you claim you’re a ghost, and I think you’re a hallucination. How do we know what’s real?” 

“Well, I’m dead and I have all this otherworldly knowledge so I know what’s real, the question is how do I make you believe I’m real,” He was lying, just a bit, he had no otherworldly knowledge, he didn’t know why he came back to earth, how he came back to earth or how she could see him. 

“Smartass,” She smiles, it is perhaps the first smile that reaches her eyes since he died. It is so damn natural, being with him, their banter is playful and loving, it almost feels like he never died. Whatever this is, she doesn’t want it to end, it feels so real, he feels so real and so _him_. “How are you going to convince me? Or will I have to call Travis to come pick me up and take me to the hospital to get checked out?”

“I’ll tell you something you couldn’t possibly know about me,” It breaks his heart, that there are so many things she doesn’t know about him, that he never got to share and she never got to learn. “And then you can ask Sully or Jennifer if it's true. If it is then I’m a ghost and if it isn’t then you should go to the hospital.” 

“Always so logical,” He can see his Victoria breaking through the grief. It doesn’t matter how he got here or why he is here or if he’ll have to leave here, because he’ll get one final chance to see her, to tell Vic he loves her, to explain things. 

“It’s why I made Fire Chief.” Lucas is trying to be funny, god knows Vic found him hilarious before he died. She had stopped sobbing on multiple occasions to laugh about some stupid joke he had said when they were laying in bed together. Which had only ever led to her crying harder afterward because she remembers he would never hold her again while making cheesy jokes. 

“Okay then Chief, tell me something I don’t know about you.” 

“I was 14 the last time I peed my bed,” Lucas says and she bursts out laughing. 

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” 

“Hey what's wrong with my cool fact about myself?” He’s trying to lighten the mood, but at the same time, he’s with Vic, so not being happy is kind of impossible. “Okay, fine you want another one? I know how to figure skate, like really well. When I was little, I wanted to play Hockey, but I was a very lanky kid and they wouldn’t let me into the class until the instructor suggested I take figure skating classes to get good on the ice and build some muscle. And so my mom signed me up for figure skating classes, but by the time I had grown enough to play hockey, I had fallen in love with figure skating.” 

“We could have gone on an ice skating date,” Vic says with fascination mingled with sadness. Then she talks out her phone and texts Sully and Jennifer in the group chat they have—it’s strange, to have a group chat with her Battalion Chief and her dead fiancé’s sister, but they had all lost someone they loved. “Now we wait.”

“Now we wait.” He echos back at her. 

Vic doesn’t know how to process everything that is happening to her, it's all just a convoluted mess of grief and relief and anxiety. A really broken and messed up part of her doesn’t care if Lucas is a hallucination or a ghost, because she will take any form of Lucas before anyone else, even one made by her own brain. The rational part of her brain is begging her to call Travis this second and have him take her to Grey-Sloan and find out what the fuck is wrong with her. The romantic dreamy part of her brain is hoping Lucas is actually a ghost and she’ll get the person she loves more than anything back, she could have a strange fairytale romance with her ghost fiancé. 

Her brain is extremely overwhelmed, she has been living the past few months in a state of perpetual grief and temporary pain relief. Some days she manages to not think about him much, other days she can barely get out of bed. She had been going to GriefShare (to one in Portland because that was the only place they could actually be together as a couple when they would drive down to Portland and pretend Seattle didn’t exist.) she had stayed afloat. 

Now Victoria isn’t sure if she’ll survive losing him for a second time, whether or not this is actually Lucas. If she loses whatever this is, her heart might give out, her knees might buckle under all the grief and she might lose the battle she has been fighting ever since she first heard he was in the hospital. 

Vic looks at him, really looks at him, and she crumbles again. He looks exactly like he did before he went into that damn coffee plant fire. Fire Chief uniform fitting perfectly, blond graying hair in loose curls she loved to mess up. He looked back at her and said nothing.

Lucas knew she needed time to digest the whole thing, honestly, if it had been Vic that died and she came back to him as a ghost, he might’ve had a heart attack and joined the realm of the dead with her. So he stays quiet and he takes time memorizing every single inch of her face. He has missed her so much, it is almost unbelievable. Sure he can check up on his loved one from the After, but it's not the same as being in the same place with them, as talking to them. He doesn't know how long he has before this ends and he has to go back or if he can even go back, but he’ll make every damn second count. 

They stay like that for a couple of minutes, just the two of them sitting on his grave. 

Her phone pings, they look away from each other and glance at the phone. It’s laying face down on the grass. It holds their future. 

“Aren’t you going to check it?”

“Not yet, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I want to savor whatever this is for a little bit longer,”

“Okay,” He won't push her, this is about her, he’s dead and he broke her heart so he’ll let her take the lead. She doesn’t move for another hour, time tickles by and they both just bask in each other's presence. 

Victoria takes a deep breath, she has allowed herself enough time to deal with whatever is going on. 

_I’m a little teapot_

_Short and stout._

_Here is my handle,_

_Here is my spout._

_When I get all steamed up_

_Hear me shout:_

_Tip me over_

_And pour me out!_

There’s a text from Jennifer that says Lucas had been a state champion figure skater until their parents had died and he stopped skating to find a job and take care of her. 

There’s a text from Sully that says one time Lucas had gotten waisted when they were still rookies and told him all about how embarrassed he was that the last time he had wet the bed was when he was 14 because his friends from school teased him about it one too many times. 

The phone falls from Vic’s hands and onto the ground. It’s real, he’s real. Lucas Ripley is sitting next to her as a fucking ghost while they sit six feet on top of his rotting corpse. 

“Lucas, Lucas, Lucas—” She can’t stop saying his name. 

“Victoria,” He knows what the texts say, of course, he does. “Vic look at me, please look at me.” 

Her hand shoots up to his face and stops right before she can actually touch him. 

“You’re real, you’re actually my Lucas.” The way she says my Lucas makes his heart burst with happiness, and it’s true, he is hers and only hers. 

“I promised you I'd come back didn’t I?” 

Vic starts sobbing—sometimes it feels like she never stops—and gently places her hand on his cheek. It feels strange, it doesn’t feel like she’s actually touching Lucas or a person for that matter, it brings the harsh truth back to her, he is still dead. He feels cold, and not completely solid like if she tried hard enough, she could push her hand through his body. 

And none of it matters, because Victoria Hughes has Lucas Ripley back and there’s nothing left that can stop her. 

Lucas can feel her hand on his cheek, he can actually feel her touch. She can’t just see him and hear him, she can touch him. And that’s all it takes for the dam to break. 

He’s crying as he moves to hold her, to give her an actual hug, and make up for all the hurt he has unintentionally caused her. Vic lets herself be held by him, and god how she has missed this, his arms are her home. She’s come home.

“Let’s go home, Eggy.” 

“I am home, Luke.” 

* * *

Eventually, they make it to his apartment. The same apartment she hasn’t been to since before he died. The same apartment she owns. The place that a key she can’t bring herself to remove from her keychain opens. 

Everything still looks the same, no one has touched anything for months so there is dust gathering on top of everything. Their matching slippers are by the door—Lucas didn’t like wearing shoes inside the house, Vic thought it would be funny to buy matching slippers—her coat still hung on his coat rack. 

It doesn’t hurt like she thought it would, but that might have something to do with the fact that he is holding her hand as she walks through the threshold. 

“I’m sorry Vic, for leaving the hospital, for dying, for not getting to marry you, for all the pain I’ve caused you I’m so sorry.” He doesn’t regret saving Captain Collins, he could never regret saving a life, but he regrets so many of the things that happened after that. He hates that he froze and didn’t immediately accept her proposal. He hates that he was stupid enough to not get check out at the hospital. He hates that he ran away from Grey-Sloan. He hates that he broke her heart. He hates that they never got to get married. But the universe has given him a second chance of a sort, and he will make things right.

“You should be, you fucking should be and I’ll be so mad about it that I’ll yell at you later, but for now, let me be happy you’re back, that you came home.” Right now, Victoria cannot bring herself to feel any sort of negative emotion or pain, because she has the love of her life back. Vic knows she’s probably going to crash soon and the dam will break and there will be many painful conversations, but she deserves a happy day for once.

“Deal. I’ve missed you so much, Vic.” 

“I’ve missed you too, please don’t leave me again”

“Eggy at this point, not even death can do us part.” 

She laughs and it’s Lucas’ favorite sound in the whole universe. His joy must somehow trigger some sort of ghost power or something because suddenly there’s soft violin music playing through the apartment. Neither of them knows what’s going, neither of them cares very much, they have each other and that’s all that matters. 

“Ghost powers,” He offers with a shrug.

“This is so bizarre, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Vic says and Lucas is sure her smile is so damn bright it could light up an entire city.

Victoria offers her hand to Lucas and they dance like it's the simplest thing in the world. They dance for hours, swaying and laughing and crying, and talking. It’s them, and they are the best thing in the entire universe. 

“Can you even get married to a ghost?”

“We can always try.” 

“It’s not like we were a rule-following a couple anyways hubby.” 

He leans down to kiss her, and the moment their lips touch, everything finally shifts into place. When they fall into bed after hours of reacquainting themself, Vic is wearing his nice smelling shirt, it doesn’t smell like him, nothing does anymore, but that’s alright she has him anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'll probably post one more drabble tonight after this, and then in a couple of days I'll post the second chapter of my very sad fic about Vic's grief, and then maybe I'll post more of the Ghost series. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, it means a lot I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought in the comments.
> 
> Follow me on Twitter for more wacky stuff @DXNYARYA


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